


M-m-mechanical meltdown

by nagia



Category: Green Lantern: The Animated Series
Genre: F/M, tragedy as per usual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-05
Updated: 2013-07-05
Packaged: 2017-12-17 18:44:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/870787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagia/pseuds/nagia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i><b>Razer first realizes it’s a problem when they compare day lengths. </b></i> OR: the one where Razer outlives the entire cast (except Mogo and the Guardians).</p>
            </blockquote>





	M-m-mechanical meltdown

**Author's Note:**

> The tail end of a story whose beginning is still in fragments and may never be completed.

She’s never slept, and he’d never ask her to try.  But for the past few decades, she curls around him during Oa’s nightcycle and reviews data.  In the last six or seven years, she’s even started purging data she considers unnecessary.

She’s quiet and still during this process.  It’s a close enough simulacrum that he can sleep.

Until he can’t anymore.  The word rattles around in his head:  _decommissioned_.  Not only remove her from active duty status — they can live with that — but cut her access to hardware upgrades?  Leave her forever trying to run a fully sentient AI on the same set of memory?

That’s a death sentence.  Slow but inescapable.  And he can’t live here knowing that’s the way she’s going to die.

"Aya," he says.

There’s a momentary pause as she shifts her attention back to the present.  "Razer?"

"Would you like to play joyride?"

Those, he knows, are the words Hal Jordan used to persuade her to leave Oa on that first fateful mission so many years ago.

Aya plays along: “How does one play joyride?"

#

They ultra-warp into the Forgotten Zone and duck a Red Lantern patrol.  They drift past a few solar systems; Razer lets a few days pass before he asks Aya to contact Mogo.

It’s not exactly easy to be close to a planet (says a man in love with a navcomputer), but Mogo is one of the old guard.  Mogo remembers who Razer and Aya used to be. And Mogo has a graveyard of ships he can cannibalize for parts to keep Aya learning.  At least for a while.

#

A while, yes.

It wouldn’t even count as a year on his homeworld.  He’s gotten used to Oa’s solar time, but as his scavenged parts begin to dwindle, he finds himself thinking: So soon?

#

Mogo’s been kind enough to orbit various suns for them.  How fitting: he finally realizes it’s time to let her go right around sunset.

He rests his back against the cool metal of one of the  _Interceptor_ ’s interior walls.  She lies in his arms, head pillowed against his chest.

They don’t talk about what happens after.  He doesn’t know what will be left for him.  He doesn’t want think about what might or might not be left of her.

Instead, he says, “I love you."

He fully expects those to be the last words she hears.  There’s too much else to be said, a lifetime of observations and explanations and apologies and hopes and too little time left. His only means of telling her anything true rests in that single phrase.

It’s the best he can give her.

"I love you too, Razer," she says.

He watches the last light of the last upgrade wink out.  But she’s still with him, green and white and a warm rush of willful energy against his armor.

There’s a faint pause.  The ship’s computers gather data in a whir.

There’s a note in her voice almost like panic as she asks, “Are my components properly aligned?"

But her lips have curved up.  He smiles back, helpless.  She remembers.  All these years — centuries — and she hasn’t purged this.

Razer closes his eyes.  "You look fine, Aya."

"You also look fine."

The ship darkens.  Eventually, the emergency lights flicker on.  His lap is host to a few white metal parts.

The navcom does not re-initialize.


End file.
